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Analyst Ratings for Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK)

Updated: 2017-07-28

Shares of Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) have received a consensus rating of Overweight from Wall Street analysts. About 30 days ago, MRK was issued an average rating of Overweight.

A buy rating was issued by 11 analysts, 1 gave an overweight rating, 9 issued a hold rating, 0 gave an underweight rating, and 1 issued a sell rating. Over the past 90 days, the number of analysts that are bullish on the stock has decreased by 1. Meanwhile, the number of analysts pessimistic about the company has increased by 0.

Many analysts weighed in on price targets for MRK. The most optimistic price target was 75, which equates to a potential upside of 17.76 percent. The most pessimistic analyst gave a price target of 52, implying potential capital losses of -18.35 percent. It is advisable to not rely only on price targets or ratings, as these can be biased for some stocks.

Analysts have revised their earnings estimates upwards for this quarter, by about 0 percent on average, compared to last month. This can be compared with the average change in earnings estimates over the past 3 months, which is -1.14 percent. Meanwhile, fiscal year estimates have been revised upwards by 0.13 percent, compared to last month. If we look at the last 90 days instead, we find a net average change of 0.92 percent in FY estimates.

Another thing investors often look at is the level of agreement among analysts' revisions. 3 analysts made positive revisions to their quarterly estimates over the past month, which can be compared to the 3 analysts that decreased their estimates. Also over the last month, 5 analysts increased their estimates for the FY earnings, compared to 0 analysts that revised their FY estimates downwards.

The growth rate of MRK's earnings is estimated by analysts to be 156.17 percent. Another measure frequently examined by investors is the PEG ratio. A lower PEG ratio is favorable, as that can indicate whether the high price level of a stock is warranted by high growth. Many investors consider PEG ratios between 0 and 1 as preferrable, but many choose to perform ratio comparisons with other companies in the industry. The PEG ratio of MRK is 0.26.

MRK has traded between a high of 66.80 and a low of 57.18 over the past year. The current market price is above the trailing year's low by 11.39 percent, and 4.66 percent below the high. MRK has a price/earnings ratio of 41.09. Investors typically compare the P/E ratio to a company's peers in the industry.
The MRK value stock report compares MRK to some of its peers using value stock
charts. The market cap of MRK is $169.03 billion. MRK is estimated to release their earnings results for the quarter on 0000-00-00, days from today.